Ahhh, Spring. The weather is (finally) getting warmer. The grass is actually green, and it’s finally still light out at 6 p.m. I love spring. It always feels like a new start, a new beginning, a chance to start fresh after a snowy, grey and seemingly everlasting winter. Flowers are blooming, birds are singing … la dee da dee da …

OK. Enough of this poetic, mushy babble. Let’s get real. If you go to Luther College, spring means stress. If you’re a senior, like yours truly, it means that you will now face daily, sometimes bi-daily anxiety attacks about one or more of the following: a) your unfinished, thesis-lacking senior paper that is due in ONE DAY, b) all the other last-minute assignments and research papers you somehow have to pull out of your you-know-where within the last weeks of this semester, c) fifteen thousand applications, interviews and apartment searches that lead you to question if perhaps being a student for the rest of your life isn’t that bad after all and d) the fact that you are leaving your safe little bubble in three weeks, in light of looming student loans, insurance payments and new friends that will be a whole lot less likely to do a beer bong with you. Going to class in pajamas is not fashionable. Oh, and you don’t have a caf card anymore. No more “borrowing” food from the caf. Back to Ramen for you.

I’m going to refrain from telling you which one of these concerns troubles me the most, but I’ll be honest with you, anxiety is at the top of my list of feelings in my last semester here at Luther. You know you’re in trouble when you lie in your bed at 3 a.m. on an idle Tuesday morning, thinking of the best possible way to connect paragraph A to paragraph B so you can attempt to prove an argument about something along the lines of “the correlation of some weird chemical with another word you don’t really know how to pronounce.” Or when seeing your cap and gown makes your blood pressure rise by 20 points. Don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled to embark on a life beyond the blue Norse sea, but the fact that some pretty life changing decisions have to be made within the next 25 days (25???? Only 25??????? HOLY CRAP, BATMAN! WE’RE SCREWED!!) is rather threatening. And I know that I am not alone.

I just saw one of my housemates who proceeded to tell me that her hair is falling out. (Nope, I am not stowing away an 80-year-old grandma in Baker Village.) My housemate is 21 years old and losing her hair. Why, you ask? To which I am going to refer you to the above list of ever-growing concerns of the average college senior.

Perhaps, though, what’s really important here is to realize that these last weeks, as crazy as they are, are not meant to be full of anxiety attacks and hair-loss. Although I am thinking about nothing else but my overdue library books that I will now need to check out for the fourth time as I am writing this, I encourage all of us, not just seniors, to take this time to enjoy what’s left of this semester.

In the long run, it won’t really matter whether you read the last 15 pages of that classical novel or remember exactly how to do that one impossible math equation. What will matter, though, are the memories that you make in these last days, the fun you can have with your friends and the Luther community in general.

So try to have some fun while getting your work done, too. Seriously, we’re way too young for a mid-life crisis. We have at least 30 years left. And until then, just do the best you can.